


Things Gone Unsaid

by Godtiss



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Godtiss/pseuds/Godtiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade is left to pick up the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Gone Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an anonymous prompt on tumblr.

John doesn’t remember how he gets home that morning.

He doesn’t remember who unlocks the door to 221b, who half-drags him up the stairs to his bedroom, who eases him into bed and removes his shoes. 

When John opens his eyes it’s dark. His phone is missing from the bedside table, but his watch tilted at the right angle so that it catches the light from the streetlamp outside reveals it to be just past midnight. He peels off his jacket – he’d fallen asleep in his clothes again, typical – and redresses into soft pyjamas. 

He can hear the muted hum from the telly as he descends the stairs. The volume is low – Sherlock must’ve fallen asleep with it on, or else forgot about it once distracted by one of his experiments. John bypasses the living room entirely, padding silently into the kitchen to take something for the headache he can feel settling at the base of his skull.

When he turns, it isn’t Sherlock he finds stretched out on the sofa, but rather a worn-looking Detective Inspector, brow furrowed even in sleep. 

For a moment, John continues to remember nothing.

Then he’s torn between racing down the hall to Sherlock’s room or tiptoeing silently, and ends up stuck half-limping awkwardly towards the closed door. He has never wished to be wrong as much as he desperately needs to be in that moment.

Sherlock’s room is empty.

John curls up in the bed regardless, telling himself he’s simply keeping the sheets warm so that when the detective returns he won’t feel the chill that seeps so keenly into John’s bones. 

* * *

He wakes shouting, the tattered remnants of the nightmare tugging restlessly at the edge of his consciousness.

Perhaps not so much a nightmare as a memory, but for John they are one in the same. Except this time, for the first time in years, there are no echoing gunshots ringing through his ears but rather the sickening crunch of impact.

Blood smells the same against Afghanistan sand as it does London concrete. He doesn’t try to fall back asleep after that. 

Lestrade comes looking for him at half past nine. John can hear him climbing the stairs to his room, can hear him clattering back down moments later, towards where John is tucked away with his head buried in pillows and blankets that still smell like Sherlock.

He turns away from the door, feigns sleep. Lestrade tries to rouse him anyway, offering a glass of water which John forces himself to take. He declines the toast, attempts to ignore the other man’s existence until he gets the hint to leave John be.

“How’s your head?” The Detective Inspector’s voice is rough, words stilted as though he can’t quite decide if it’s the right thing to say. 

“Fine.”

John turns away, onto his side so that his eyes can trace the patters in the wallpaper rather than the wrinkles in Lestrade’s shirt.

“The, uh – the funeral will be the day after tomorrow.”

Shoulders tight, fingers curled. John shudders a breath and says nothing.

“I know you probably don’t want to hear it, especially not from me, but I’m sorry John.”

Eventually he does leave. Not completely, not from the flat. John can still hear him moving around in the kitchen, settling back onto the sofa, but at least John can breathe again even if it’s only gasping breaths forced past the lump lodged in his throat, expanding lungs bruised by the painful beating of his heart.

He doesn’t move for two days. Lestrade brings him water and, once, paracetamol. He tries to coax John into eating the toast he half-burns, manages to get a few bites between silent lips but then John’s rolling onto his side, back to the Detective Inspector, and Lestrade sighs and leaves again.

Not the flat. Lestrade never leaves the flat – at least, not that John’s aware of. The other man doesn’t make an appearance when John wakes shouting and shivering and shaken from his nightmares, but he suspects it’s from respecting John’s privacy rather than lack of presence.

John has little doubt his nightmares wake them both. 

The morning of Sherlock’s funeral, John crawls from the bed and forces himself to go through the motions of showering, shaving, dressing. He pads silently down the hall, finds Lestrade fixing tea. It’s sweeter than John normally takes his, but he swallows it down and tilts his head in the faint approximation of thanks.

Lestrade drives to the cemetery – John and Mrs. Hudson sit together in the back, she tutts over him and he lets her because it’s something familiar and fine and she understands the emotion behind his gaze better than perhaps anyone else in the world.

They stand together around the grave, the three of them.


End file.
